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Chapter 6: Jesus Christ, I Missed!

The first question:

Osho,In reality there is no ego, no self, no atman. You say you are not a person but a presence, that you are a mirror. When it is cloudy outside you are cloudy. You reflect whatever is.You also say everyone is unique. Where is the uniqueness to be found in a mirror? Uniqueness implies separateness, individuality. Enlightenment is union. I know uniqueness must be so in enlightenment, for I cannot imagine Christ or Buddha running their ashram the way you do if they were alive now and all three of you were doing that.Knowing that, I still do not understand this paradox. It puzzles me deeply. Please comment.

If you want to remain unique, then avoid enlightenment.

Everyone is unique, but not a Buddha, not a Christ, not a Krishna, not me. To be unique you first have to be. A buddha is one who has disappeared. A buddha is one who is no more; how can he be unique? There is no possibility.

Enlightenment is the same, its taste is the same. Whenever it happens it is the same truth. It has no uniqueness in it; it can’t have, it can’t afford it. Diseases can be unique, not health. Health is simply health. You can have your own specific disease, your own way of being ill; the other can have his own way. There are millions of diseases in the world - you can choose - but health is simply one. There are not millions of healths in the world. The moment you start dropping your diseases you start dropping your uniqueness too. A really healthy person has no uniqueness about his health. How can he have it? He’s healthy.

One book is different from another book - because something is written, that written message makes the difference - but two empty, blank papers are not in any way different. One house is different from another house: they have shape and form and name, architecture, but two empty spaces can’t be unique in any way. They will be exactly the same. Two zeros are simply zeros and nothing else.

Buddha is a zero. He is not there. His not being there is his buddhahood. If you understand this, the paradox disappears. The paradox arises because you go on thinking in the same terms that you think about yourself. I say again and again that you are unique. You have never been before. Like you, there has never been a single person: you are so ill, you can only be unique. There will never again be a person like you. The print of your thumb is just yours.

But I am not saying that about a buddha, I am saying that about you. All mad people are unique. Once they are sane, uniqueness disappears. The very idea of being unique is part of insanity. It is an ego-trip.